


VII

by Postal_Pillar



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2
Genre: Drama, Revenge, Seven Samurai, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:16:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1778809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Postal_Pillar/pseuds/Postal_Pillar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is 2239 and the Enclave are on the move, sweeping the West Coast of America in search of something or someone. They are being hunted, a small band of seven disparate hunters following them, all with a score to settle. These seven will make their stand at the town of Hope Creek, a village threatened with destruction, and finish what the Enclave started.</p><p>It's time to get even.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Future's Foundation

**Author's Note:**

> First AO3 fic, woot!
> 
> In the spirit of the story, recommended listening can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_e4m3bl5_U. Enjoy!

It was a crisp and bright Sunday morning, uncharacteristically mild for early February 2239, when the trucks and vertibirds descended on the town of Hope Creek. They came along the road that cut through the hills that surrounded the town, heavy tyres bouncing on the mud track, advancing with impunity. Through the small fields that that formed a perimeter they went, half-obscured by crops or watched by impassive cattle, engines growling. Foliage rippled and clothing on lines flapped as the vertibirds roared overhead, stirring wind and dust.

Confused and frightened, its people stumbled from their homes as the heavy trucks rumbled to a halt in the small square that served as the village’s main gathering point. They watched in fear as figures in power armour emerged from the canvas-covered tops of the vehicles, hulking in their steel and frightening with the laser and plasma rifles they carried. A name was murmured. Until now, it had been nothing but a rumour of distant troubles and far-flung worries, put aside and ignored in favour of more immediate problems. The whisper rippled across the crowd, laced with fear and worry.

 _Enclave_.

The weapons they carried gleamed in the sunrise, the harsh curves of their armour glinting as they moved forwards as a wall of metal. Dust whipped up around them as a vertibird flew overhead with rotors burring, the metallic buzz of some hellish insect, stinging grit sending people cowering along with the threat of violence.

“Attention people of Hope Creek.”

The words were a roar hashed by static, bellowed by one of the figures who had stepped from the trucks. The weapon he carried was strange looking, neither laser nor plasma, a series of coils running along its barrel and a turnable crank on its chamber. On his back was an axe, a weapon most people would have needed two hands to carry, electricity crackling off its charged and glowing blade.

“All citizens will assemble here and remain until dispersed,” he ordered, and in his voice there was no doubt that he would be obeyed. “Any who attempt to hide from us, or who attempt to resist, will be executed. Cooperate and you live.”

He glanced back towards the Enclave troopers behind him.

“Delta, make a sweep, round up anyone you find and bring them here,” he said. “If they try to run or fight, kill them.”

A small squad nodded, pushing through the crowd without resistance, heading towards the mongrel buildings of Hope Creek. They dispersed among the constructions of mud brick, corrugated iron and scavenged concrete, built on the shells of old buildings, heavy steel boots breaking down doors.

As they went, the door of the lead lorry opened, and another passenger hopped down from the cab. She was an anomaly among the armoured bulk of the Enclave troops, in a prim lab coat and glasses, hair pulled back in a girlish pigtail. There was a Pip-Boy on her wrist, the screen of the bulky computing device glowing green.

“Good morning, everyone!” she said, tone jovial. “There no need for alarm. We’re simply here to run a few simple tests, and then we’ll be on our way.” She clapped her hands together. “Now, if you would all be so good as to form a line along this side of the road, we will get on with our business. Children at the front, please!”

Wordlessly, compelled by the weapons and armour of the troopers around them, the people of the town began to shuffle to the roadside, forming a rough line. Those that were slow were urged on by shoves from the Enclave soldiers or a pointed prod from a weapon. Rifles were trained on them as they stood in place.

“Is that everyone, Captain Masson?” the woman in the labcoat asked the leader of the Enclave’s troops.

“Delta should be finishing their sweep, ma’am,” Masson replied. “I’ll see if I can get them on the radio.” The radio was flicked on, and a brief conversation with the squad concluded; “They’re on their way, ma’am, rounded up a few stragglers.”

Preceded by an Enclave trooper, and followed by the rest of Delta Squad, the remaining population of Hope Creek were herded into line. There was no resistance. There was no desire to, not against the laser weapons and power armour and circling vertibirds. Any attempt to fight back would be suicide.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Enclave’s leader said, stepping before the crowd. “Thank you for your cooperation today. I am Doctor Miranda Hart, and I am here today because you are going to help me and my friends here with the great endeavour of ensuring humanity’s future. Our species is beset on all sides by danger, has been under constant threat since the Great War and we, the Enclave, are the only ones who are willing and able to save it. For this to be the case, however, we do need your cooperation, so may I ask; who is in charge here? Any kind of leader or elder?”

“That’s me.”

The voice was a croak, from a cowled figure who shuffled forwards through the crowds, garment fluttering in the wind stirred by the rotors of a passing vertibird. One of the villagers tried to hold him back, but they were pushed off. The cowl was removed. Beneath it was a face that belonged to a corpse, scabrous and pitted, made ruin by radiation. A ghoul, a human who had survived being blasted by radiation through some unlikely miracle of genes, but had been rendered a walking corpse.

“I know what you people do,” the ghoul said. “I’ve heard all about your killing. And I’m not afraid of you, either. These are my people, and I’m standing up for them.”

“No,” Doctor Hart said, drawing a laser pistol. “No, I’m afraid you aren’t.”

She shot him. It was a clean, surgical shot through the chest, an action made as passionately as the extinguishing of a candle by pinching its wick. The ghoul collapsed, a hole bored through his heart. Several of the villagers rushed towards him, but they were pushed back by the bulk of the Enclave troops stepping between them.

“Mixing with ghouls,” Doctor Hart said. “Very disappointing start, I’m afraid, does not bode well at all. Are there any other degenerates you have hidden away? In fact, was this…thing even from around here?”

There was a hesitant silence.

“Was the creature I eliminated local to this area, or was it an outsider?” she asked. “Do hurry up and answer, I’d rather not shoot anyone else unless I really have to.”

“He…Johnson came here about twenty five years ago,” one of the villagers managed to stammer out.

“I see,” Doctor Hart nodded. “Then there may be hope for you yet.”

She rubbed her hands together.

“What we are doing here today is determining whether or not you, the people of Hope Creek, are human enough,” she said. “We, the Enclave, are looking to the future, are taking great strides towards it while the rest of the world squats in the dust. But the journey to the future is not easy, and it is not one that can be made with baggage. The mutated, the irradiated, the mentally ill, the sexually deviant, all of these things are deadweight, unnecessary burdens that we cannot afford to carry with us. Our future must be made by the best of humanity, and it is a future with no room for the aberrant or the genetically corrupt. Today is the first step in deciding whether your people are worthy of going forward into the future, or whether you are unwanted baggage that must be shed for the good of humanity.”

“What do you want?” someone in the crowd asked, fear in their eyes.

“Like I said, we’re here to do tests,” Doctor Hart replied. “DNA samples to look for genetic markers, genome sequencing, that kind of thing. We are searching through the flowerbed to see if we can find the weeds, so to speak. With the future in mind, we want your children. They’re the result of this village’s genetic input, they are the ones who can give us the most comprehensive picture of your DNA’s makeup. We’ll take them, do a few tests, and if you pass they’ll be returned for you none the worse for wear; after all, pure humans like myself and my colleagues here are precious resources, and I would be loath to waste them.”

“You can’t!”

There was a cry of outrage, and the villagers pushed forwards before Captain Masson fired his weapon in the air, the handle on it whirring with the discharge.

“We can and we will!” he bellowed. “There will be no argument.”

“As the good captain said, we will,” Doctor Hart said. “After all, we have the guns, the power armour and vertibirds; who can stop us? If you do try to fight, that’s a demonstration of stunted self-preservation instinct, which is indicative of genetic abnormality. Any of you who display signs of that will be exterminated immediately. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

She smiled, rubbing her hands together.

“The good news is that, should you pass our tests and be determined as worthy of joining us, you will enjoy the benefits of living under our protection,” she said. “Food, medicine, education for your children, and all you will need to do in return is support us in our endeavour with supplies and manpower. You will be citizens of America at the dawn of its rebirth, paying a small price for freedom, democracy and safety. Captain Masson?”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Get them on the trucks.”

Clamping hands on some of the children and pulling them forwards, the Enclave troops herded the town’s young onto the lorries, moving them at gunpoint. Some of the people pushed forwards, yelling and protesting, but they were forced back by the troopers making pointed jabs with their laser and plasma rifles. One young man was smacked to the ground by Masson, the weapon’s butt smashing across his jaw, and the point of his Gauss Rifle was levelled at his bloodied and battered head.

“ALL OF YOU SHUT THE HELL UP!” he roared over the crowd. “SHUT THE HELL UP NOW OR HE DIES!” They fell silent. “We’re taking your brats. You want to see them alive again, you stay put and you don’t make trouble. Delta squad will be garrisoned here to ensure compliance, and they’ll be reporting in to me.”

The only sound that was made was the sobbing of the children as they were forced onboard the trucks and the roar of the circling vertibirds. Doctor Hart opened the door of the lead lorry as the last of them were put aboard, Enclave troopers taking up positions at the back of the large vehicles.

“Let’s get going, people,” she ordered.

Engines snarling, the trucks rumbled into motion, circling the square and exiting along the road they had entered by. A single vehicle remained, Enclave soldiers unpacking communications equipment while their leader addressed the remaining citizens of Hope Creek, giving orders. The vertibirds circled a few more times, before they too left, following the trucks with the blades of their rotors sending the scrub that blanketed the surrounding hills roiling.

Sometime after the aircraft had left, fading into the thin clouds with the wind of their blades no longer disturbing the foliage, one of the low bushes that dotted the hillside moved. A figure rose into a half crouch, a ghoul, rangy in the dust-brown coat he wore. He carried a rifle with a scope across its back, and a wide-brimmed hat over his head shaded him from the sun.

“God dammit,” he growled, seemingly to empty air. “Compville all over again.”

“Did you see her?” another voice asked, as a young woman broke cover a few metres behind him, from where she had been watching the ghoul’s back. “Was she there?”

She looked human, clothing lighter than the ghoul’s attire with a sleeveless jacket and loose trousers, a bandanna holding back her hair. Those who looked closely would have seen her slit pupils, the odd tilt of her nose, the strange wide flatness of her fingertips.

“Had her in my sights the entire time while she was giving one of her little speeches,” the ghoul said. “Forgot how much she loved to talk.”

“What? Why the hell didn’t you take the shot?”

“Didn’t want those vertibirds leaving us as scorch marks on the hillside, kid.”

“God damn it, Ripley,” the girl said shaking her head. “She’d be dead, that’s what matters.”

“That’s what matters to you,” Ripley said. “I’m interested in living past this, kid.”

“That radiation shrivelled your balls off, old man.”

“Whatever, Kat,” Ripley shrugged, already turning and heading on up towards the crest of the hill. “The others are going to want to know about this. We need to get going.”

“Fine,” Kat said. She spared the town one last glance, at the bulky specks that were the Enclave troopers, and followed in the footsteps of the ghoul.


	2. Hunters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening for this chapter is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34I2dCO8U8A. Don't know if anyone actually listens to these, but whatever. Posting them anyway.

“It’s the same as last time,” Ripley reported as he and Kat arrived at the camp. “They’ve arrived, abducted the kids and they’ve got a garrison in place. Once that bitch is done conducting her tests it’s probably going to be what we saw at Compville.”

He was addressing five others, gathered in a small camp. It was a simple affair, a few tents pitched around a pre-War APC, a heavy tracked vehicle patched with plates of salvage and occupying a clearing in a forest of dead trees. At the centre of the small encampment was a fire, a young mole-rat turning on a spit.

“Like I said it would be,” the young man leaning against the five-ton vehicle said. He wore a leather jacket that jangled with metal ornamentation, and his hair was a single strip of bright violet swept across a shaved scalp. He was skinny and lean, androgynous with his effeminate features and haircut. “Still looking for ‘pure humans’.”

“The point is that we’re here in time now,” Kat said. “We can move in and take the garrison out, find out where they’re working from and we can hit there.”

“What about the town?” The question came from a woman sat down against the APC’s treads. Her face was covered in stripes of white and red tattoos, flowing down the rest of her neck and her bare arms in smooth lines of crimson and bone. They were interrupted only by a sigil of a sword and cogs on her right shoulder.

“What about it?”

“I’m thinking we should help them, that’s what,” she said.

“She speaks truth,” the giant of a man who sat next to her rumbled in an avalanche of voice, a disassembled shotgun laid on a cloth before him. His torso was bare apart from a few patches of crude armour, covered in the same tribal insignias as the woman next to him. “No more corpses.”

“What about Enclave ones?” the kid leaning against the tank asked.

“Enclave, yes. Innocents, no.”

Kat looked like she was about to protest, but before she could speak Ripley stepped in.

“We can discuss strategy later,” he said, tapping the roasting mole rat on its snout. “When’s this going to be ready? I’m starving.”

“Few more minutes,” the man at the end of the spit replied from where he was turning it. “I’m taking it off the heat in a bit and leaving it for a bit, keep the juices in.”

Before the question could be asked, the last member of their grou, a woman wearing a heavily patched labcoat and tapping the screen of a pip-boy answered it; “Wandered into camp this morning, just after you’d gone. Sniffing for scraps, probably. Wexler tapped it between the eyes and lunch was sorted.”

“Thank god for that,” Ripley said. Pulling off his coat, he spread it on the ground by the fire and sat down on it, holding his withered hands by the flames. “I’m gonna get warm; crouching in dew all morning is cold work.”

“It’s chilly up here,” the punk, Jay, remarked. He rapped his knuckles on the side of the tank. “Lucky thing Beast has got good heating.”

“So what exactly did you see?” Wexler asked. “Hey someone give me a hand with this molerat, I want it off the fire.”

“Enclave rocked in with a full show of force, vertibirds, power armour, everything,” Ripley said as the tribal man rose from his position to help Wexler carry their meal from the fire. They rested it between two tent poles, once they were sure it was secure. “Got everyone assembled, took the kids, left a squad behind to keep things in order.”

“Like in Compville,” Jay said. “They’re hostages as well as test subjects. They’ll use them to keep everyone compliant. We should have been quicker, been there before the Enclave arrived.”

“Well we weren’t,” Wexler replied. “Thanks, Shank.”

The tribal shrugged. “No problem. Ripley, how many Enclave?”

“Full squad,” the ghoul replied. “Ten of them, plus radio equipment. All in power armour and probably reporting in regularly.”

“So even if we took out the garrison force we’d still be at risk of getting the kids killed before we can find out where the Enclave are operating out of,” Shank’s fellow tribal said.

“If they’re in an Enclave lab, then dying is a mercy. Forget them, go after the Enclave.” This was Kat’s suggestion, and it surprised none of the others.

“It’s irrelevant,” the woman in the lab coat said, looking up from her Pip Boy. “I know how Miranda works; she’s not going to kill a lab sample as a hostage. Not when there’s a chance that they’re what they’re looking for. Besides, in her eyes, if they’re ‘pure’ they’re too valuable to waste.”

“Townspeople don’t know that it’s a bluff, though,” Ripley said. “They saw her execute someone in cold blood, there’s no way they’d be willing to call it.”

“You absolutely sure you don’t know what they’re searching through these villages for, Kassa?” the tribal woman said.

“No idea,” the woman in the lab coat replied. “I was involved in Project Zarathustra, but this is something new. Trust me, if I knew I would have told you.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Oh come on, Daisy, I’m not with them anymore,” Kassa protested.

“Hey, looks like that mole rat’s ready,” Wexler interjected, a heavy combat knife in his hands as he prepared to cut the meat. “Who feels like eating?”

“Sounds good to me,” Ripley said, pulling open the flaps of the heavy backpack he had resting on the ground. After a few moments of rooting around within, he pulled a battered tin plate free, along with a knife and fork. A few slices later, and the group was sat around the fire and eating.

“This is pretty good, y’know,” Daisy said as she ate. “Where’d you learn to cook? You never struck me as the type.”

Wexler shrugged.

“Let’s just say that when you’re out on a three-week patrol, you _can_ live off the MRE’s the NCR issues, but you’ll wish you can’t soon enough. One of the first bits of advice you get told as a Ranger is learn to cook or else learn how to enjoy eating ration packs, and trust me when I say cooking is much easier to pick up. You said you hunted, though Ripley, how come you’re no good with food?”

“Eh, food’s never been number one priority when I hunt,” Ripley said. “I generally sell the meat on, get someone to cook it for me. I’ve always been in it for the hides and stuff, not the meat.”

“Fair enough,” Wexler shrugged, taking a bite from the cut of meat he’d sliced off.

They ate in relative silence, finishing their meal with few words. Daisy stuck her plate to one side and lit a cigarette before she said; “So, the town. The Enclave. How are we dealing with them?”

“Ripley, what did you manage see there?” Wexler asked. “I’m talking details here, layout of the town, where the Enclave are, that kind of thing.”

“Hang on a minute.” Ripley put his plate down and disappeared into the surrounding woods. He emerged a few moments later with a stick in hand. Finding a patch of bare earth, he began to sketch a crude map into the dirt. “So this is Hope Creek. People here built it on the foundations of an old pre-war town, can see it in the buildings. One road running through it, goes from east to west-”

“Wait a minute,” Daisy said, craning her neck around. “The road goes north to south, doesn’t it?”

“ _My_ east to west,” Ripley said. “I’m drawing from my north, Daisy.”

“Makes more sense for the map to be orientated towards the compass when you’re drawing that thing.”

“She’s got a point,” Wexler said. “It’s what we did back in the Rangers, made things clear.”

“Well I’ve started drawing the map now,” the ghoul snapped. “I’m not starting again just for your precious compass orientation.” He sketched an arrow pointing upwards next to his map, writing an ‘N’ at its point. “There.”

“Bah, east, west,” Shank grumbled. “Why bother with compass? Sun rises here, sun sets there, brightest star shines in that part of the sky, moss growing on trees always faces that direction. Much easier than doing what some needle says.”

“See, Shank’s got the right idea,” Ripley said. “I think.”

“Anyway, Enclave,” Jay interjected. “Where are they?”

“Far as I could tell, they were setting up a little outpost in the central building there,” Ripley said, pointing at the largest square on his map. “Old church, by my guess. We’ve got building cover on the approach there from all directions, and a lot of these fields around the town are growing corn, and that stuff’s high enough to hide us pretty well.”

“You mentioned radio equipment, didn’t you?” Wexler said. Ripley nodded. “Then we’re going to have be quick and quiet about it, get them before they can call for help.”

“Still makes it a problem after we’ve dealt with them,” Jay said. “They’re going to be checking in.”

“I can deal with that,” Kassa said. “I know Enclave radio protocols, I should be able to keep them fooled for a while.”

“We’ll still need to deal with ten trained, armed and armoured Enclave troopers,” Daisy said, taking a drag on her cigarette. “And we need to deal with them quickly.”

“Me and Beast aren’t going to able to sneak in there, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Jay nodded. “And no offense to you two, but Daisy and Shank aren’t exactly what I’d call quiet.”

“I’m a scientist,” Kassa added. “There’s no way I can stand up to an Enclave trooper in a straight fight.”

“So it would be me, Kat and Ripley who could slip in there and actually fight,” Wexler said. “I don’t fancy the odds of the three of us against ten Enclave soldiers.”

“I could probably handle it,” Kat said.

“You’re being cocky, kid,” Ripley shot back. “Maybe get the villagers to help us out? They’ve got numbers and they’re bound to have guns. Only reason they’re afraid to use them is because they think their kids are being held hostage.”

“Shank and I need to be in there,” Daisy said. “Let’s face it, we’re the muscle in this group, and we’re the ones best equipped to deal with them. Even if we get the townspeople to help us it’s going to be unarmoured or lightly armoured wastelanders versus powered armoured soldiers with energy weapons; that’s not gonna be a fight, that’s gonna be a massacre, even if we win.”

“Still don’t know how we’re going to get you in there,” Ripley said. “I mean, you’re toting a minigun and I’m guessing you’ll be in power armour, and ever since Shank covered his shield in mirrors he’s got no way of getting in there without being noticed.”

“Why’d you do that, anyway?” Jay asked.

“Laser weapons are light, mirrors reflect light,” Shank said. “Mirrors on shield reflect laser weapons.”

“There’s something about that logic that seems pretty shaky,” Jay said. “Kassa, you know about this stuff, would it work?”

“No idea,” Kassa shrugged. “My R&D field was biology and genetics, not weaponry. From what I can guess, theoretically. I mean, lasers have been reflected in laboratory conditions, though not weaponised ones as far as I know.”

“You know what they say,” Daisy said. She tapped the ashes of her cigarette onto the dirt. “Field testing is the best kind of science.”

“I have never, in my entire life, ever heard anyone say that.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“Right,” Kassa said, shaking her head. “Daisy’s…alarming understanding of scientific discipline aside, how are we going to sneak her and Shank into town.”

“And what about me and Beast?” Jay asked. He patted the side of the APC, as if to emphasise his point. “Let’s face it, we could use a few tons of armour on our side.”

“If nothing else, it would be good cover,” Shank said. “Your beast needs a weapon, Jay.”

“Trust me, I’ve been trying to find one,” Jay replied. “Not as if people leave heavy ordnance lying around. In the meantime, I can still crush people with it.”

Shank grinned at that comment.

“Still leaves the issue of getting it into the town unnoticed,” Daisy said.

“I think,” Kat said, looking at the tank. “I think I got something. I know we can’t just go for a full-frontal attack without them calling for help, but all we need to do is get close enough to hit them.”

“That’s what we established, yeah,” Wexler nodded.

“Then I’ve got an idea.” Kat smiled. “After all, why does Beast need to sneak in when we can hide it in plain sight?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I'm not too great at closing lines, I know.
> 
> Anyway, if you liked it leave some kudos, leave a review and put a ring on it. You all know the drill.


End file.
